pile up
Britishverb
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to gather or be gathered in a pile; accumulate
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informal to crash or cause to crash
noun
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Accumulate, as in The leaves piled up in the yard , or He piled up a huge fortune . In this idiom pile means “form a heap or mass of something.” [Mid-1800s]
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Be involved in a crash, as in When the police arrived, at least four cars had piled up . [Late 1800s]
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Even as new signs of economic strain pile up, Federal Reserve officials are sticking to an upbeat forecast for growth, and they’re pointing to artificial intelligence to explain why.
From Barron's • Mar. 31, 2026
Seve has let the detritus of life pile up around him — literally — with delivery packages and plastic-wrapped clothes overrunning his tiny Baltimore apartment.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 25, 2026
Affidavits from five Cuban men described being forced onto buses on several occasions and driven to Santa Teresa, N.M., a remote, one-lane border crossing where tumbleweeds pile up against an 18-foot-tall border wall.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 14, 2026
In a blog post, the band's former press officer Stuart Bailie recalled telling the papers that a "pile up of snow on the venues makes it too hazardous" to play, because "a roof might collapse".
From BBC • Mar. 13, 2026
“Why are you continuing to pile up the wood?”
From "The Birchbark House" by Louise Erdrich
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
